


dreaming on the verge of strife

by deliarium



Category: Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery
Genre: Blood and Violence, Clairvoyance, F/M, M/M, Multi, Pacifism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Canon Major Character Death, Trench Warfare, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-08-22 15:50:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16600937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliarium/pseuds/deliarium
Summary: Walter Blythe, throughout the war.





	dreaming on the verge of strife

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ashling](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/gifts).



“He's young; he hated war; how should he die  
When cruel old campaigners win safe through?  
But death replied: ‘I choose him.’ So he went.”  
—Siegfried Sassoon, _The Death Bed_  

 

A gentle fall of rain is murmuring outside the shelter of the dug-out as Walter crouches and writes by the light of a solitary candle burning low on an empty shell box, aided by the occasional flash of a flare signal hissing into the sky. Overhead the larks are trilling sleepily, sweet and mellow, in the dark boughs of splintered trees hemming the trenches, providing a welcome respite from the thunder of mortar rounds and machine-gun fire. Whenever he nudges his head out he can discern the barest sliver of moon peeking from behind the rainclouds, and his heart momentarily gladdens. Since arriving at the trenches Walter has grown so long accustomed to only seeing the world as muddy and grey and ashen, but tonight—tonight, Walter envisions a sea of purifying moonlight streaming pale and silver over the desolate, shell-shattered ground of No Man's Land, glimmering waves caressing the forlorn bodies of the dead and ushering them toward their final harbor. It's a pleasant image that lingers in his mind's eye a little longer than usual before fading, and Walter has precious few of those nowadays.

But death shall come for him, too, before night falls tomorrow. He has known this ever since he witnessed the silhouette of the Piper crossing through No Man's Land last night—perhaps he has always known this, in a way. His mind nonetheless is distinctly clear and calm, settled in a remote kind of acceptance. All his life Walter has had the blessing—and the curse—of an intensely vivid imagination, which in turn has earned him either the respect or the mockery of his peers, and yet he has never been able to overcome the vague sense that there _were_ in fact times when he could glimpse into tantalizing, far-off vistas of worlds beyond their own, stealing visions both of sublime beauty and unspeakable horror. Such a moment descends upon him now, as his bone-deep exhaustion carries him over to a state that is nearly trancelike. When he looks up into the dusky, starless expanse of the night sky, he imagines that he can see the veil separating life and death flutter open just briefly; he gazes upon the souls of all the men who fought and fell beside him, sees the reflection of himself shuddering into place among their ranks.

Walter shakes himself firmly back to reality and continues writing. He has not had a full night's sleep in weeks, perhaps months; his senses are weary and strained almost to their breaking point, but some compassionate instinct tells him he must finish this one final letter, a palliative for the pain he will inevitably inflict with his passing.

_I've won my own freedom here—freedom from all fear. I shall never be afraid of anything again—not of death—nor of life, if after all, I am to go on living. And life, I think, would be the harder of the two to face, for it could never be beautiful for me again._

Beside him the candlelight dances and flickers with the wind, the pale molten core burning down steadily as he finishes penning his last goodbye.

*

Redmond College in the autumn of 1914 is ablaze with war fever, the flames of patriotic sentiment fanned ever brighter by the colorful posters sprouting up daily around the halls and the uniformed officers milling around the campus during recruitment drives. But at least two individuals are, as of yet, resistant to the excitement that has so heavily permeated the undergraduate student population. Newly inducted freshman Walter Blythe is unhappily pacing about his room, having abandoned his half-hearted attempts at working on his English composition due to the distracted turbulence of his thoughts; nearby his friend David Bouchard is perched on the divan with a slim volume of Verlaine, considerably less aggrieved.

“Walter, really, what is the matter?” David asks in slight exasperation, as Walter turns to look at him with tormented eyes.

David is an upperclassman from Montreal who, like Walter, is a passionate devotee and writer of poetry, though his own works tend towards a mix of experimental obliquity and bilingualism that often render them too esoteric for the Redmond Daily. He and Walter had met through one of Redmond’s more exalted literary circles, composed largely of male aspiring writers who secretly preferred the company of other men (although Walter privately joked to Di once that he leaned more towards Shakespeare than Marlowe in that regard). Walter had taken an instinctive liking to him, with his brilliant chestnut curls, his unaffected coolness of charm and manner, so different from Walter's own dark coloring and diffidence; moreover, David is one of the increasingly few people left at Redmond who could be counted on not to look at Walter with contempt or pity whenever they pass in the halls. To be sure, David has also earned the reputation of being a rather dyed-in-the-wool pacifist, which he avows began after he'd read a treatise by Tolstoy when he was younger. David believes vehemently in the immorality of all war, and though Walter uneasily disagrees on that point, he cannot help but admire the diamond-hard strength of his conviction, his ability to transmute ideals into practice.

“The war is all anyone wants to talk about, even the professors, and I can’t even bear the thought of it without feeling ill," says Walter, struggling to contain the overwhelming pit of anxiety in his stomach whenever he approaches this subject. "It's even worse than when I was laid up in the hospital with typhoid last year and felt like I was on the verge of dying at any moment. At least then I could console myself by imagining I was Edward VII on his sickbed, with the whole nation waiting to throw a celebration in my honor when I recovered. But everything about war is just so— _hideous_.”

“It’s carnage,” David agrees darkly, not looking up from his reading. “Senseless carnage, and poor innocent fools being lured into mass slaughter by bloodthirsty megalomaniacs—”

“They aren’t _fools_ ,” Walter says passionately, thinking of Jem. “In fact, I envy them—to be willing to lay down their lives at a moment's notice for a cause they know is right and just—there can be nothing nobler than that."

“ _Ah_. This argument again.” David sighs, setting his book down on his chest and folding his arms behind his head. “If you really feel that way, what on earth is preventing you from enlisting yourself?”

“I’m not brave enough to answer the call,” Walter admits, his grey eyes momentarily clouding underneath their lashes. “And yet—I _know_ I must. I can hear it every day, and every night in my dreams—that sweet and terrible phantom music of the Piper, with his shadowy cloak and eyes like flames. I’ve always heard it rather distantly, ever since I was a boy, though I was too young at the time to comprehend what it meant. Now I understand—I shall never find peace so long as I refuse to pay the sacrifice in blood and join him and the others, in their merry dance of death."

“God! You absolutely terrify me when you talk that way, Walter.” David’s tone is nevertheless slightly admiring, for Walter always looks even more uncommonly beautiful when overtaken by one of his wild poetic fancies. “I think the thing that’s truly bothering you is your conscience. The crux of this war really all comes down to greed and European propaganda nonsense, you know.....”

This is followed by his usual tirade about Canada—French Canada especially—having no obligation either to defend France or to further the imperialist interests of the British Empire, with Walter mechanically interjecting counterpoints out of a fixed sense of loyalty to king and country. The debate circles through the familiar emotional and intellectual arguments, which by now must have been hashed out _ad infinitum_ among college students throughout the continent. Still, listening to David speak, Walter despite himself feels slightly better in his deep-seated revulsion towards warfare, and secretly he wishes he could convince himself of David’s viewpoint as readily.

He also cannot help but notice that there is a new edge of bitterness to David's voice—for David has his personal reasons, too, for being against the war. His last beau had gone into khaki just a few weeks earlier, and they'd apparently had a fierce quarrel over it at the time, from which Walter suspects David has never really recovered.

Perhaps it's partly for this reason that Walter later finds himself being pressed down with his back flush against the divan, David's breath warm in his ear and all talk of politics and global conflict abruptly forgotten. Walter feels the pulse quicken in his throat, as David gently slides a lock of Walter’s dark, straight hair through his fingers. He is not exactly a stranger to such fervent attentions from male classmates, though it is not something he usually indulges, preferring instead to sublimate all manner of desire and longing into poetic expression.

This time, Walter tilts his head and obliges.

*

Ever since the war began Walter has found writing poetry to be an utter impossibility, when previously it had been a pursuit that would come as naturally to him as eating or breathing. The wellsprings of creative inspiration, once overflowing with wondrous and bountiful ideas, have now all but completely dried up; the rare lines he does manage to put onto paper seem terribly insipid and colorless, like vague shadows. He knows that his English instructors have also taken notice of the steep decline in the quality of his writing; the faint disappointment in their eyes as they hand back his marked up essays cuts at him deeper than if they had been more overtly critical.

As the weeks pass, there continues to be no apparent end to the steady deluge of boys from his college enthusiastically lining up to go into khaki. Outside of David the tentative friendships he'd struck up at the start of the year have more or less dissipated, as the majority have proven, like Jem and Jerry, only too eager to respond to the summons of the motherland and take up arms overseas. Walter tries to distract himself from it all by throwing himself headlong into his studies—a tenuous effort that falls into shambles after he receives his first white feather, dropped in his mailbox with no name but its message resoundingly clear. David tells him, with his usual equanimity, not to mind so much what others think (having received no fewer than half a dozen feathers himself, which he had made into a small fan), but the fact is that Walter _does_ mind, has always minded. He still has not grown accustomed to the chilly reception he encounters from professors whose sons gallantly answered the call; the boys in his class who have been barred from enlisting due to athletic injuries now glare with resentment at his whole, vigorous body, and the girls who had always tried to flirt with him between lectures have taken to loudly whispering to each other whenever he walks by, their derisive laughter following him down the hallway. When Di and Nan are around one of them would usually retaliate with some clever and biting retort that would be the last word on the matter, but when alone he can only walk away with his cheeks aflame, unable to articulate any sort of rationalization or defense.

Rilla and Una’s faithful stream of letters at least provide some temporary balm, between Rilla’s lively anecdotes of Glen St. Mary affairs and Una’s steady words of empathy and encouragement. _You mustn’t be hard on yourself, Walter. To tell you the truth, I cried every night for a week after Jerry left and felt so utterly wretched that I was hardly of use to anyone for a while. I don’t know how Faith keeps it together, with him and Jem both gone, but she’s been so wonderfully composed and I told myself I must strive to be brave like her—for Bruce’s sake, if not my own. I did very well keeping my chin up for the next few weeks until I found Jerry’s old jaw-harp while hunting inside one of the closets—and I don't know why, but then the tears just started flooding back, harder than ever. Of course, afterwards I just put on a smile and went back to my knitting group as if nothing had happened. Oh, how I wish this horrid war was over!_

But the worst sting occurs when he is mailed that lengthy and spiteful anonymous letter from one of his classmates, dedicated to excoriating every possible aspect of his character as indicative of his cowardice; he burns white-hot with humiliation over it for weeks. Certain paragraphs are brutally direct in their malicious slurs and insinuations about his proclivities, which provokes Rilla into a flurry of scorching invective on his behalf when he shows it to her. Though immeasurably grateful for her support, Walter hasn't the heart to tell her that those parts are not, in their essentials, fictitious.

In the early hours after midnight—once David has kissed his cheek and slipped away, and Walter’s room becomes wreathed in dark shadows—he would still be lying wide awake in sheer misery, his imagination running wild through various possible scenarios of himself in the trenches, all of them lurid and horrible. The mere notion of taking another man's life is painfully sordid to him. When he was younger, the idea of going off to battle always seemed rather romantic in theory, shrouded in elevated fantasies of chivalry and courtly love, of gleaming knights and brotherhood and loyalty. He has gleaned enough from his academics and short course of teaching to know that the realities of war are far more unpleasant and ugly than what could be found in Tennyson poems. And yet—perhaps far uglier to him would be what people like David and Mr. Pryor believe, a despairing view of the world that Walter, deep in his sensitively idealistic soul, cannot bear to contemplate—a world that would so coldly allow millions of young men to be massacred for no greater purpose or consequence, that could render the suffering and sacrifices of so many ultimately all in vain.

At night he dreams again of the Piper, his shadowy form crossing through Rainbow Valley as distinctly as Walter had seen him so many years ago, trailed by his ever-expanding parade of youthful followers. He is sitting alone on a grassy bank with a book in his lap as the others march past; he sees Jem waving cheerily from his place near the front of the line and calling out to him. In the dream they are both children again, the same wide-eyed boys who used to fish and frolic together, carefree, in the open meadows.

“I can’t come with you,” Walter replies sadly, from his position on the pond bank. “I—I’m too afraid.”

“Don’t be such a baby, Walter!” Jem scoffs, in the same tone he'd used trying to persuade Walter to 'walk the plank' whenever they played pirates. “There’s nothing to fear, really—it’s all just a grand adventure, like those old epics you used to love.”

With a jaunty whistle he turns around to follow the Piper's music, in perfect lock-step with the other children. Walter silently watches as they all march away, a thin black line fading into the distance.

*

On a warm spring evening back at Ingleside, Walter is sitting down for dinner with his family and the Merediths, where current events have tinged the conversation with a deeper than usual layer of melancholy. The sinking of the _Lusitania_ is the latest topic presently absorbing them all; Susan is viciously enumerating a series of domestic-themed punishments she'd inflict on the Germans if she could, with Father subtly goading her on.

Faith Meredith is sitting next to him, deep in conversation with Nan and Di about their Red Cross plans. She looks as always breathtakingly lovely, her shining blonde-brown hair spilling loose around her shoulders like burnished gold, and Walter absently recalls a pile of sonnets that he keeps carefully stowed away in the back of his drawer. But Faith's eyes have become more sedate and somber now, ever since Jem went overseas; her smiles are now imbued with a stiffness they had not had before.

A violent pang of guilt shudders through him as the conversation turns to gossip around the latest enlistments in the Glen, and Walter casts his eyes down to moodily stare at his plate. He knows that they all do not expect it of him because of his bout with typhoid, but he dreads the eventual day when one of them will need to implore him to go and do his duty. And he dreads even more what his response will be.

He looks up again to see Una giving him a small, sympathetic smile across the table, and inexplicably he feels as though a knot has just briefly loosened in his stomach.

Afterwards he takes up on Rilla's invitation to go on a ramble with her and Una through Rainbow Valley, which has the usual effect of dramatically lifting his spirits. The air fills with bright laughter and reminiscence as they traverse the sunlit, well-treaded paths of yore, pausing to admire the delicate pink mist of cherry trees in full blossom against the dark charm and mystery of the firs. They make a stop at their old beloved hollow so that Walter could greet the White Lady and the Tree Lovers and pay his due worship to the shrine of their loveliness. The brook with its clear, amber waters winding through the valley babbles to him happily like an old friend; in the distance the setting sun is blazing over the slopes of the glen, shading the skies purple and crimson.

Despite Rilla's teasing Walter lays himself down in the grass underneath the willows, gloriously basking in the scenery as he is wont to do, with dazzling palaces of wonder and enchantment spinning themselves out in his imagination.

“This place somehow becomes lovelier every time I come here,” Una says softly, sitting down beside him and brushing the wind-blown hair from her eyes. “With all the dreadful things happening overseas, I'd almost forgotten that there could still be such beauty left in the world.”

 _“An endless fountain of immortal drink_  
_Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink,”_

Walter quotes dreamily, his eyes still half-closed. The spell wavers just a bit from the faint, intrusive memory of the _Lusitania_ , the sick feeling of horror that had overcome him when he'd read about it in the paper. His mind, in a confused whirl of emotion, wanders to the two dear girls beside him—pretty and laughing Rilla, who is quickly becoming a capable young woman, as well as the savior and guardian of a thriving war-baby—and gentle-hearted Una, whom he had called a tea rose once, a description that he now thinks belies her unusual, quiet sort of strength. It is for people like them, he thinks, that the men abroad have been fighting for, and the promise of a better world—a world where beautiful things such as this could still be loved and cherished.

Rilla has gone over to the edge of the pond, where she is picking a small handful of violets. Watching her with a moment’s sharp-eyed clarity, Walter senses the irresistible pull of something larger than himself, feels the last of his fears slowly melting away. It is as though everything is gradually shifting into place, and he can see for the first time his small but crucial role in the grand organization of the universe.

All of a sudden he notices Una gazing at him, her large, wistful eyes appraising.

“You’ve decided?” she says, her voice lowered to nearly a whisper.

“The Piper is calling for me, Una,” Walter responds quietly. “I can deny him no longer.” A strange, decisive calm has settled over him, as well as a ripple of intense exhilaration. He feels as though he could run, laugh, write lines, roll in the grass, do anything.

Suddenly very pale, Una turns her face away towards the sun sinking down over the hills, its last white-gold rays glancing off the shimmering surface of the pond. On impulse more than anything, he takes her small, trembling hand in his and presses it.

The Piper’s music is ringing triumphantly in his ears.

*

After a full morning of packing Walter's boardinghouse room in Kingsport has taken on a rather sterile and lonely appearance, scrubbed of all lingering vestiges of his personality. He will be starting his training in the local camp tomorrow, and considering how much longer the war could theoretically go on for, he sees no point in keeping most of his old possessions, in the not terribly unlikely event that he never returns. Strewn across the floor are large boxes full of clothing, blankets, and supplies that he plans on donating to the Red Cross. He takes one last parting look around the room, the walls bereft of their haphazard assortment of letters and photographs, the dusty shelves above his bed empty and forlorn. He has given all his treasured books to Di for safekeeping, as well his stash of old poetry. It makes him ache to part with them, as if he is leaving pieces of his soul behind.

The khaki uniform feels stiff and odd on him still, but he supposes he will grow used to it in time, just as he will soon grow used to the feeling of an oiled rifle in his hands. As he takes a final stroll through the tree-lined haunt of Old St. John’s, nodding politely in response to the admiring glances of passersby (as though most of them hadn't completely shunned him just weeks ago), he suddenly remembers one last thing that has been left unfinished.

In town an antiwar demonstration is steadily brewing outside a small Quaker meeting hall. Walter quietly threads his way past the gathering of suffragettes, trade unionists, and radicals mingling on the pavement, chanting in unison and holding up large signs with slogans decrying militarism and agitating for peace.

David is standing among the cluster of people in the center, distributing pamphlets and collecting relief donations amid the yells and jeers of angry bystanders. Walter watches him distantly from outside the throng of demonstrators, now uncertain whether it would be a good idea for him to approach. In one of his more alarming flashes of fantasy—or premonition—he suddenly has a very clear mental image of David being arrested and dragged away with his head held up high, of him lying in the filth and shadows of a crowded prison cell—and he knows, somehow, that this may be the last time they shall ever see each other.

This ends up deciding things for him, and he wades his way through the crowd. David looks up automatically as Walter comes nearer, and his mouth straightens. There is a low murmur of unease among the other pacifists, mostly directed towards Walter's khaki, but none of them approach him.

“I’m sorry, David.” Walter pauses, not sure what exactly he is apologizing for. "You know I have to.”

David does not answer at first. His eyes look heavy, and extremely tired. Walter recalls a letter David had written him recently over the break, a brief note saying that his former lover had been killed in a raid overseas.

“God bless,” he says finally, holding out a hand, and then changes his mind at last second to pull Walter into an embrace, warm and—to all appearances—brotherly. With a strange mixture of relief and sorrow, Walter takes a deep breath into his shoulder and holds him tight.

*

At dawn on the 5th of August he arrives in a port at Le Havre, where he is awakened by the gleeful shouts and cries of boatmen in French. Walter goes out onto the main deck where a gathering of soldiers has already congregated by the rail, muttering excitedly and admiring the bright lights illuminating the harbor. He has never been so far away from home before, Walter reflects as he gazes at the looming edge of land, a small breeze stirring the dark hair beneath his khaki cap; behind their ship the deep cerulean ribbon of sea rolls along endlessly, implacably, as the vast distance continues to widen between him and the silvery, dune-filled shores of Prince Edward Island.

 _“What of the faith and fire within us,_  
_Men who march away,”_

Walter scrawls on his diary that evening, from a poem he’d read once in the paper. The words give him at least a modicum of comfort, as poetry so often does.

The other soldiers in his company like to rib him for his writing habits and dreamy manner, though not unkindly. For the most part they generally treat him with a grudging respect for his way of “talking fancy,” amid all their coarse language and bluster. Despite their differences, Walter quickly builds up a camaraderie with his cohort, playing football with them in their downtime and dashing off witty lines of verse for their amusement. When they are in Flanders spending long hours digging trenches or filling up sandbags, grimy and fatigued, Walter would recite stanzas of his old poetry by moonlight, or regale them with memories of the idyllic wonders of Rainbow Valley and the worlds he has built up in his head throughout the years.

He finds himself getting along particularly well with a shy, nervous Canadian private in his platoon, with softly curling golden hair and a sweet, angelic face that Walter finds strikingly pretty. His name, Walter learns, is Thomas White, a former McGill student of his age who harbors aspirations of being a classical musician; it takes only a few subtle inquiries to determine that he is both unattached and indeed “so” (as David and his friends would say). They play cards together in the trenches, exchange pictures and stories of their families, and have long heart-to-heart conversations late at night, about everything from art and literature to God, faith, and philosophy, while listening to music from Thomas's gramophone. Walter shows him several desultory ideas for poems that he has idly sketched out in his diary since their deployment, and Thomas in compensation sings and plays him ragtime tunes on the piano of a village pub, full of thrilling life and vivacity. (And if, later on, they mostly choose to huddle near each other for warmth in a bivouac, or on bales of hay inside a barnhouse during the harsh winter nights, it is a fact never commented on by the other soldiers—for _esprit de corps_ is encouraged in the army, after all.)

Now and then he will run into Jem or Ken while being billeted in one of the neighboring villages. Jem's fiery hair is becoming streaked with grey at the temples, and there are hardened lines adding years to his once boyish face. He drinks and smokes rather heavily now (“Don't tell Susan,” he laughs, winking), and Walter notices he no longer talks of the war in terms of high adventure or a great game to be played. His scientific mind is grimly occupied with practicalities and scraps of military strategy that he manages to overhear from the officers. They do not talk much of the world they both have left behind, but Walter cannot help but know that Jem keeps a locket with a piece of Faith's hair that he wears, close to his heart.

The letters and packages from home are what he looks forward to most every week. Mother and Susan furnish him and Jem both with generous supplies of knitted garments and soaps and shaving cream; Di and her girlfriend send along a parcel of sweets from Redmond; David encloses a couple collections of poetry, with his love; Rilla continues to cheer him with delightful missives of home life that make him ache with palpable longing. And Una—sweet, thoughtful Una—sends him several packets of flower seeds after he offhandedly mentions in a letter his homesickness for the flora of Ingleside. He grows a small garden of primroses, rhododendrons, and forget-me-nots in pots made from spent artillery shells and slips pressed flowers in his letters to her, kissed with fragrance.

One fateful day in the trenches, during a prolonged lull in hostilities, Walter is abruptly struck by an intense bolt of inspiration for a poem about the war, which refuses to let him go until it is set down into ink. He begins writing feverishly while hunkered over in a corner of a dug-out, surrounded by fellow soldiers delousing and boredly complaining of fleas and trench foot; words and metaphors flow from the tip of his pen so easily and expertly that it is almost as if something else were writing through him as a medium. The entire poem, which he entitles “The Piper,” takes him only a couple hours to complete, and afterwards it feels as though he has managed to conjure something powerful from deep within himself. Reading it over, with the rare thrill of utter artistic satisfaction, he knows it is likely the best thing he has ever composed, an enchantingly lyrical, elegiac hymn to freedom as well as an impassioned call to arms. He recites it to his comrades, most of whom are still new enough to the war to be swept away in patriotic fervor. They listen, spellbound, and Thomas rapturously implores him to submit it to one of the papers.

It is the first poem he has been able to finish since the start of the war, and later on he would have the vague presentiment that it is one of the last poems he may ever write, that certain sanctums of joy—and romance—and beauty—would soon be closed off to him forever.

*

The months at the Western Front wear on inexorably, from the grey and drizzling autumn season through the biting winter snows, until the last of the frost finally melts and turns the muddy landscape into a quagmire of sludge. To Walter, the days and nights spent in the trenches have all started to run together, in long stretches of tedium and waiting interspersed with the heightened terror of an action or raid—and always, through it all, the overpowering odors of burnt cordite and chloride of lime, of human filth and death and decay.

The brutality, the sheer _ugliness_ of trench warfare never gets easier for him to endure, but Walter forces himself through it anyway, because he must. Although he has not quite become the “happy warrior” whose virtues Woodsworth extolled, nonetheless a somewhat detached part of him can smile thinly at the irony that he is actually rather good at soldiering when he puts his mind to it—that the fine hands he has mostly used for composing poetry have proven equally adept at tossing a grenade or firing a rifle.

On one particularly harrowing day in early May, the divisional commander orders his battalion to launch an attack on a local objective behind enemy front lines, which quickly proves to be impossible in light of the massive German numbers. The ensuing skirmish wipes out over half of the battalion, forcing the battered survivors, Walter among them, into a hasty and ignominious retreat.

Somehow Walter and a few dozen of the remaining soldiers manage to race back across No Man's Land to the safety of their trench, throughout the inferno of heavy shelling and machine-gun fire. Walter's heart is still pounding wildly from the near escape; he counts at least seventeen of his comrades who were gunned down in front of him, even more who were killed en masse by the bursts of shell-fire during the retreat. He sinks onto the ground and buries his face in his hands, trying to steady the harsh noises of his breathing and block out the horrifying images that refuse to leave him.

A thin, distant scream rises up from somewhere within No Man's Land, amid another deafening explosion of shells. With a start Walter recognizes it as Thomas’s voice, a realization that causes a surprisingly violent stab of pain in his chest. The shelling so far had been relentless; surely he would not hold on for much longer. Walter could only hope that it would be fast for him, and relatively painless.

But the screams continue, interminably, for the next minute and a half. Walter takes a furtive look around him; the other soldiers are visibly shaken to the core, or else busy tending to their injuries. In that moment, Walter decides.

“Blythe, are you fucking _crazy?_ ” someone yells as Walter scrabbles back over the parapet, fueled by instinct more than any actual plan.

There is an instant barrage of artillery fire as he enters the hellish terrain of No Man's Land, followed by the scream of whizz-bangs hurtling past and bursting around him, sending up showers of earth and debris. Aided by the stuttering rifle shots of covering fire from his own trench, Walter dashes his way past the thicket of barbed wire, dodging the incoming rain of sniper-bullets and sloshing through muddy puddles. He focuses intently on the sound of Thomas’s voice, driving everything else out of his mind, including the whispers of his own fear.

He finally finds Thomas lying at the bottom of a precipitous shell-hole, right in the heart of No Man's Land. His right leg is bleeding profusely, carved open to the bone by a large piece of shrapnel. The side of his face is equally gruesome to behold, its youthful beauty marred by a long jagged patch of crimson.

Walter’s stomach clenches. He kneels down into the mud next to Thomas, trying to remember what Jem had told him once about stanching blood loss. Taking out his trench knife and handkerchief, he quickly improvises a crude tourniquet to wind around Thomas's upper leg. Thomas is babbling wildly with pain as he tightens the handkerchief; overhead the incessant crackling of artillery fire continues from the German trench, punctuated by the whistling of shells. As Walter makes a final few twists of the tourniquet and secures it, his nostrils are promptly assailed by the putrid stench of decaying flesh, and it suddenly occurs to him that they are surrounded on all sides by rotting corpses—some of them perhaps several days old, if not several weeks.

Walter tries, with great difficulty, to suppress the wave of nausea welling up inside him, and he determinedly veers his thoughts back to the matter at hand. He sees Thomas reaching out and trying to tell him something very frantically, but his words are all spilling out in a confused jumble. Walter attempts to calm him with some soothing remarks and gestures, to little avail.

Thomas grapples for a moment inside one of the pockets of his tunic, taking out his revolver and proffering it to Walter with shaking hands; his bright blue eyes are quietly pleading. Walter stares at it blankly, with a rising feeling of mute horror. He knocks the gun away and firmly hauls Thomas out of the mud, taking the full weight of him onto his back.

Shrapnel explodes all around them as Walter pulls them both out of the shell-hole and rushes back into the open territory of No Man's Land. He manages to cross a couple hundred yards before a sniper-bullet streaks his side, and there is an instant white-hot, excruciating flash of pain. Walter’s vision blurs with bright spots; he has never done well with pain, and for a split-second he staggers under the weight of Thomas's body, feeling as though he might faint from the sheer agony of it.

And then—all of a sudden, he feels _nothing_ , nothing at all—only the surge of adrenaline and a single-minded, desperate will to survive.

He regains his footing and manages to propel the both of them through the last fifty or so yards, reaching the trench just as he feels ready to collapse from exhaustion. Breathing heavily, he lowers Thomas carefully over the parapet as other soldiers flock to assist. A doctor is coming over with bandages and morphia, with stretcher-bearer in tow.

“Jesus,” says Lieutenant Baxter, peering back out of the trench through his periscope binoculars. “That was one hell of a run you just made, Private Blythe.”

Walter doesn't reply. His side is starting to ache, and Thomas is coming to again, his face shifting under Walter's hand.

“Am I dead?” he moans softly, as the doctor gives him an injection of morphia. “Oh God, please tell me I’m not dead.....”

“It’s all right,” Walter tells him gently. “You’re safe now, private. It’s over.”

*

In the coming days he is awarded a Distinguished Conduct medal for his act of “conspicuous gallantry” under heavy fire, as well as a subsequent promotion. He remembers only being relieved to learn afterwards that Thomas is recuperating successfully in the hospital and will be medically discharged home to Ontario once fully convalesced, to be kept safely out of the remainder of the war.

But it's the scores of other lives that his mind dwells on in the remote hours of night, the fallen comrades he wasn’t able to save, whose numbers grow day by day: men he has seen with their limbs or faces blown off by shrapnel, men suffocating under heavy clouds of phosgene, men slowly dying in his arms of gunshot wounds and crying out for loved ones in their final breaths. He channels his mounting guilt and grief into further actions on the battlefield, volunteering to rush machine-gun posts and compulsively attempting to rescue and render aid to as many as he can, no matter the risk to himself. For this he steadily acquires a reputation throughout the regiment for possessing an exceptional degree of courage (or near-suicidal recklessness, as some have less flatteringly put it). Walter is not altogether sure this reputation is deserved, as it is less fearlessness or devotion to duty that impels him to act than it is a passionate loathing of seeing people suffer.

Throughout it all, he continues dutifully answering his many letters from home; as always he keeps his responses carefully light and genial, focusing on the gradually fading memories of a more pleasant chapter of his life. He does not say, “Oh, Rilla-my-Rilla, war is worse than you or I could have possibly imagined.” He does not talk of the last time he knew he had killed a man—a boy, really—killed him with a single shot straight to the head and watched the life seep from his body. Nor does he talk of the horrible dreams, which have worsened to the point where he can hardly sleep most nights, or of the moments after surviving a particularly heavy bombardment or gas attack when he feels completely numb and disconnected from the world around him. He would not burden them with such things, and in any case they are impossible to describe to anyone who has not been on the front lines, even with all his literary reserves.

Over the next few months he also receives an outpouring of letters from around the world about “The Piper,” a more dramatic response than he could have ever dreamed or anticipated. He reads letters from grieving widows and mothers who found solace in his words, as well as young men who were inspired to enlist because of him. He is informed that journalists and critics are already hailing it as the great poem of the war, that it has been reprinted in papers all over and is being used with great success to recruit soldiers and sell war bonds. A prominent Canadian politician writes to him, thanking him for providing an instrumental service to his country. _All of Canada is proud of you._

Among his fellow soldiers, he has discovered the reception to be more ambivalent. Some of them, particularly the fresh-faced new recruits, will cheer enthusiastically towards him in passing, or burst into spontaneous recitations of “The Piper” in the company mess. Most of the more experienced soldiers, however, become rather quiet when they hear the now famous words. Walter somehow does not find this reaction surprising. The poem makes him strangely uneasy to read now; certain lines which initially seemed quite dreamy and quixotic have taken on a different, somewhat sinister tone to him as the war goes on. It often still feels like it wasn’t he who had really written it at all.

*

_And so—goodnight. We go over the top at dawn._

Walter tucks his letter into an envelope and lays it aside, before blowing out what remains of the candle. The rain is gently pattering still on the roof of the dug-out, and a single aeroplane is droning away in the sky. His drowsy eyelids are slowly but surely beginning to smooth over with sleep.

He thinks of everything that he'd written of in his letter, the spirit of enduring faith and hope and love he tried his best to convey, and he thinks of the things that he might also have written but that must now forever go on unsaid. He thinks of the pale lilies and starry asters that tonight are blowing sweetly all over the moonlit fields of Rainbow Valley, that “land of lost content...shining plain.” He thinks of David’s kisses, Rilla’s laughter, Faith’s smile, Una’s eyes. He thinks of all the poems he never finished, and the poems he will never have the chance to write. What was it that Keats had written once, just before he died? _I have loved the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remembered._

The small pang of wistfulness that accompanies this last thought gradually gives way to a rare serenity, driving away the dark images that have threatened to disturb his rest for the past few months. His fingers no longer itch for tobacco, which he has found himself, like Jem, relying on more as an anodyne these days. As the dim stirrings of sleep finally overtake him, he recollects a few lines from the last poem he’d written in the trenches, one that he shall never publish and that will earn him no praise or accolades.

 _The dead are happier than we who live_  
_For, dying, they have purged their memories thus_  
_And won forgetfulness; but what to us_  
_Can such oblivion give?_

*

He is standing alone in the middle of Rainbow Valley, the air stifling hot and imbued with a slight crimson haze, the sun burning harshly over the distant hills and the fields bathed in blood, poppy-red. The Piper is crossing through the valley again, calling out alluringly to the young people of Canada—but instinctively he feels certain that it is a different Piper from the one he has always known, his host of followers amassed in larger numbers than ever, and his unearthly music now frenzied and discordant. Watching them pass, Walter experiences something akin to a wind chill sweeping across his soul. They are marching off toward some vast shadowland a thousand times more terrible than the Kaiser, more terrible than anyone could ever envision; in the distance, he sees the hazy silhouettes of the millions of young followers to come, lined in a seemingly endless procession; in his ears pounds the steady, relentless beating of drums; and for a moment he wildly thinks, _Blood for blood, blood for blood, oh God they shall never be free, never, never, never—_

He wakes abruptly in a sweat, a small cry escaping from his lips.

Outside of his dug-out the rain has stopped pouring; the larks have finished their music for the evening and taken flight. The skies above are open and clear, glistening with starshine. Walter tilts his head back, letting his eyes fall shut; the swirling eddies of his thoughts calm again as the nebulous memory of the dream fades away; his racing heartbeat, in time, begins to slow. All the world is utterly still, and silent, as he drifts back into the peaceful embrace of sleep, deep and unfettered by dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> The text from Walter’s last poem comes from L.M. Montgomery’s “The Aftermath,” published in _The Blythes Are Quoted_ and attributed to Walter Blythe just before his death.
> 
> Other poems directly referenced in this story: John Keats' “Endymion”; Thomas Hardy's “Men Who March Away”; A.E. Housman's “Into my heart an air that kills.” Walter's “The Piper,” of course, is likely L.M. Montgomery's stand-in for “In Flanders Fields.”
> 
> Title is from Frances Cornford’s poem on Rupert Brooke: “A young Apollo, golden-haired / Stands dreaming on the verge of strife / Magnificently unprepared / For the long littleness of life.”


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